the 200ok weblog

The article you should read today is The Nuclear Option by Mark Pesce.

The MD walked into this meeting believing she held all the cards; in fact, GregoryP is the one with his finger poised over the launch button. With just a word, he could completely ruin her business. This utter transformation in power politics – “hyperconnectivity” leading to hyperempowerment – is another brand new thing. This brand new thing is going to change everything it touches, every institution and every relationship any individual brings to those institutions. Many of those institutions will not survive, because their reputations will not be able to withstand the glare of hyperconnectivity backed by the force of hyperempowerment.

We've always had networks of friends; and news would spread through those networks but it could take days, weeks, months or even years. Information would lose momentum or simply be too far out of date to be useful by the time it got around.

But these days, all of these people can be connected. Information can travel through extended networks faster than ever before - seconds, minutes, hours.

So what? Well, information has long been recognised as power. What's changing right now is who controls information. Anyone with a phone in their pocket can be connected to Twitter all the time. They can tweet for help if they get arrested or they can Twitter about the aftermath of being bullied by a large company's MD.

Where it gets really powerful is those 140 character messages can instantly go to other people who can help you. In Mark Pesce's post, he describes the way the MD's bullying could be globally publicised in minutes... and there's not a thing her old school power base could do to stop it.

The formerly disempowered can now hold the power. Just like that. Because they think it's pretty cool to send messages to friends on Twitter.

Enough from me. Go read Mark's post.

Update: Mark has YouTubed his presentation on the topic...

The Nuclear Option (Part 1 of 2), The Nuclear Option (Part 2 of 2)

Labels: information, mark pesce, power, twitter

So debate continues about Twitter. Is it great? Is it awful? Is it a chat tool? Is it a status updater and damn it you chatters are ruining it for everyone? :)

I've come to the conclusion that ultimately it's not really the format that really gets people hooked. Twitter doesn't do anything that we couldn't already do. We already have chat, we already have blogs, we already have post-by-SMS and so forth. sure, Twitter rolls it into a neat package but I don't think that's the key factor.

Personally I think the real reason that people love Twitter so much - the Killer App if you will - is that it's ubiquitous. Twitter pretty much goes wherever you want it to go.

If you're on the web, you can be on Twitter. If you're signed into IM, you can be on Twitter. If you've got your phone in your pocket, you can be on Twitter... ok, you get the point! Twitter followed us home and we want to keep it.

connected

So what Twitter really does is puts your (Twitter-)friends within easy reach. You can always let them know what you're doing. You can always hear from them. If you're travelling, you can read about the little moments of important people back home. If you find yourself walking home unexpectedly, you can tweet about it.

You don't have to have ground-shaking news. You don't really have to have any justification, Twitter doesn't demand formality or deep and meaningful thoughts. Twitter is basically like hanging out with a big group of friends. You can wander in and out and nobody minds; but they're happy to see you when you are there. You can be pretty sure someone's always around.

you-biquity

I had to mention it. I think Twitter feeds into Mark Pesce's concept of youbiquity. It can provide a timeline - some people tweet when they post a blog article or a particularly interesting photo on Flickr. Twitter can also fill in the gaps on services like Jaiku which attempt to track your 'presence stream'. Blogs, bookmarks and photos still feel a bit disconnected... but twitter adds a certain je ne sais quoi and the sensation that you really are seeing a picture of what you've been up to online.

ubiquitous or intrusive?

If it starts getting intrusive, you can close the window/app, or text OFF... and that's it. It'll leave you alone until you feel like dropping back in. Whether we have that willpower is not really Twitter's fault, nor is it unique - we don't close our email down much either, and emails usually take a lot longer to read than a tweet.

So, sure... it can be just as intrusive as any of the communications channels it uses. Mobiles, web and IM can all be intrusive. That's not new to Twitter either :)

the medium is not the message

...but the medium shapes the message. I write longer text messages via USB (ie. on a proper keyboard) than direct on my mobile's keypad. There's no reason to expect anything different when I post to Twitter.

Khoi Vinh observes that the different interfaces subtly encourage different writing styles - that the input mode changes content. I do believe that people using mobiles will post less and be more focussed on 'what am I doing?' tweets than people using the web or IM interface. After all, they're out and about doing it.

twitterbiquity!

So there's another theory: Twitter's addictive quality is ubiquity. It uses technology which is mundane in our worlds, but it achieves a sort of magic. We can stay connected even when the computer is off. We can post by mobile and friends get it via chat.

Twitter pulls together three of the most successful communications methods of the modern world. Then it's interested in what you're doing. Then it tells your friends.

Go-anywhere technology that connects people. No wonder it's popular!

n minutes ago from web... ;)

Labels: communication, khoi vinh, mark pesce, presence stream, social networking, twitter, ubiquity

[Semi liveblogged]

Right now anything is possible. Right now the energy is there...

Part one: the human essence. I'm studying what it means to be human in the sense of how we interact with technology, or when they're in groups.... so to do that I want to get to some basic ideas about humans. So I have to peel back some layers.

Humans are social animals. Why are we social? If we are social you will live longer - you are less likely to get eaten by a lion if there's someone else there yelling "look out, there's a lion".

We model all social interactions, which is not easy - it takes us years to learn how to do it. We have bigger brains than earlier primates so that we can hold a bigger social network in our heads.

Here's the dark secret of social networks: they are a lot of work. Who has the time? People just can't keep them really current. The systems are passive - they wait for you to feed that information to them. If you don't feed them, they die.

What could be going is so much more profound than what is actually going on. Time is the new non-renewable resource.

If I have a serious social network, why am I not using that information to filter SPAM?

We all create a data shadow every time we're online - email, URLs, IM, Skype... all this information could tell us who is important and why. But we don't use this information - it all gets poured on the floor.

Aside: Mark mentioned that you can't get SMS and call information off your mobile phone. Actually, my Motorola V3 lets me connect with USB and dump my text messages onto my hard drive. I was keeping SMS messages long before by transcribing the important ones, now it's easy. SMS messages have too many precious messages from friends! I don't want to lose that.

Mark points out that while we might think we don't have an emotional relationship with our mobile phones, but if we lose them we're really upset. We lose our social networks!

Enough talk! Mark developed a way to collect information via Bluetooth to capture the data shadow of someone carrying a Bluetooth mobile. They set it up for a week at a conference and they were able to show relationships for each person.

"The street finds its own use for things, uses its makers never intended." - William Gibson

This is not a bubble. This is not hype. This is where we're going: you-biquity!

Labels: mark pesce, social networking, wd06